Telegram blocks Russian opposition’s ‘Smart Voting’ bot
- ByStartupStory | September 20, 2021
Telegram, an encrypted messaging app has temporarily blocked all of the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s chatbots “Smart Voting” during voting in the country’s parliamentary election this weekend following similar moves by Apple and Google earlier.
The bot, which instructed Navalny supporters which candidate they should back to unseat Kremlin-aligned politicians, was removed after Telegram announced it would “limit the functioning of bots associated with election campaigns”.
Company founder Pavel Durov said that Telegram would obey an election law barring campaigning during elections, calling the law “legitimate”, reports Engadget.
The move comes despite the nature of the bots and Durov’s past statements. Durov had decried tech giants Apple and Google removing the Smart Voting mobile app from their respective app stores, calling it a “dangerous precedent” that tolerated censorship. The bot, Smart Voting, was only meant to identify candidates that could unseat the dominant United Russia party, not just Navalny’s Russia of the Future Party.
After Telegram removed the “Smart Voting” bot, a Twitter account associated with Navalny posted links to Google Docs with recommended candidates, saying they were their last “remaining” tools.
On September 18, Navalny’s team said that Google had demanded they delete the documents following a request from Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor and would do so itself if they did not comply.
The country under President Vladimir Putin has regularly cracked down on any political objection, including actions against Navalny himself such as an attempted assassination linked to Russian agents and a long-running effort to reverse the broader Smart Voting effort.
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